re 2. many things should be regulated yes. But buying and selling ownership shares in companies if done by professional investors who are in it for the long run and buy material stakes is not something that needs to be regulated or standardised in a stock market. Although, of course, you could be right and it ends in armageddon as with the CDS market. However, I think the players in this market would not be greedy short term bonus driven investment bankers...
generally, mutual ownership in a cooperative kind of structure has in my opinion many many advantages and is a model which is underrated and needs to be looked at in more detail (myself included).
Compare it to another issue for illustration: Do you believe it would be better policy for the government to ban marijuana commerce entirely, as is usually the case today, or to regulate it? Why or why not, and whom would benefit or be harmed either way?
I would say that drug regulation depends on how spread it is in the particular society. Banning commerce (outside medicinal proscription) of drugs that are not commonplace appears sometimes to be effective to prevent it from entering, while not effective when it comes to drugs that are already established.
I think this answer illustrates that it depends on the situation... A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Crunchyroll, for example, would not exist without venture capital: when it became untenable to proceed on its original basis, which relied on bootleg uploads, it would have simply shut down. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The basic issue here isn't funding, it's collective social permissions and policy judgement. Businesses are only 'viable' or 'not viable' according to rules that are decided by the ownership class, and which are designed to benefit the ownership class.
VC is a lynchpin of the conspiracy which creates collective efforts - i.e. businesses and corporations - which are forced to follow the rules.
Real innovation might not be quite so constrained. If the restrictions on viability, profitability and payback were loosened it's possible we'd see an explosion of genuine inventiveness.
We'd also see more interest in projects with generational payback times, which are impossible to imagine with the current politics.
In fact the VC system guarantees that only socially trivial start-ups like Facebook are possible, and that the most interesting and creative long term R&D remains goverment funded, or in some cases barely funded (i.e. approved) at all.
Having said that, kickstarter is a new(ish) model that's doing some very interesting things, and could be retooled for other applications.
Whatever takes its place will also, if effective, be part of a conspiracy which creates collective efforts which are forced to follow the rules.
The rules that collective efforts are forced to follow may be changed, but the fact that they are is not going anywhere so long as we are social animals. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Currently the rules are hidden for very selective advantage, and it's implied that they're the only possible rules.
This is a nonsense in a nominal democracy. It excludes the majority of the population who are deprived of policy input, and it also makes rational policy choices impossible.
